Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 12. CHAPTER TWELVE (continued)

These words gave him an unwonted sense of freedom; they cast a
spell stronger than the accursed spell of the treasure; they
changed his weary subjection to that dead thing into an exulting
conviction of his power. He would cherish her, he said, in a
splendour as great as Dona Emilia's. The rich lived on wealth
stolen from the people, but he had taken from the rich nothing
--nothing that was not lost to them already by their folly and
their betrayal. For he had been betrayed--he said--deceived,
tempted. She believed him. . . . He had kept the treasure for
purposes of revenge; but now he cared nothing for it. He cared
only for her. He would put her beauty in a palace on a hill
crowned with olive trees--a white palace above a blue sea. He
would keep her there like a jewel in a casket. He would get land
for her--her own land fertile with vines and corn--to set her
little feet upon. He kissed them. . . . He had already paid for
it all with the soul of a woman and the life of a man. . . . The
Capataz de Cargadores tasted the supreme intoxication of his
generosity. He flung the mastered treasure superbly at her feet
in the impenetrable darkness of the gulf, in the darkness
defying--as men said--the knowledge of God and the wit of the
devil. But she must let him grow rich first--he warned her.

She listened as if in a trance. Her fingers stirred in his hair.
He got up from his knees reeling, weak, empty, as though he had
flung his soul away.

"Make haste, then," she said. "Make haste, Giovanni, my lover, my
master, for I will give thee up to no one but God. And I am
afraid of Linda."

He guessed at her shudder, and swore to do his best. He trusted
the courage of her love. She promised to be brave in order to be
loved always--far away in a white palace upon a hill above a blue
sea. Then with a timid, tentative eagerness she murmured--

"Where is it? Where? Tell me that, Giovanni."

He opened his mouth and remained silent--thunderstruck.